Penske Media Corporation (PMC) is an American digital media, publishing, and information services company founded in 2003. PMC publishes more than 22 digital brands, including a joint venture in India with ZEE TV for its India.com brand. The company also produces more than 50 annual events and conferences as well as housing a research and emerging data business. PMC brands include PMC Studios, WWD, Footwear News, M, Deadline Hollywood, Variety, CricketCountry.com, Hollywood Life, Beauty Inc, Gold Derby, India.com, Movieline, TVLine, BGR, AwardsLine, @Hollywood, LA411, NY411, Young Hollywood Awards, The Style Awards, and Breakthrough of the Year Awards. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, California and New York, NY with 11 offices around the world.

Contents

In 2003, Jay Penske founded PMC — a business that started as Velocity Services Incorporated ("VSI"), an affinity marketing and Internet services company that later briefly operated as Interactive Digital Publishing Group.[2] The company acquired the mail.com domain, was renamed Mail.com Media Corporation ("MMC"), and re-launched the domain as a new service in 2007.[3] The company then successfully created, built, and sold (Mail.com), which was at the time the 5th largest web portal, to United Internet.

On April 27, 2010, Mail.com Media Corp. announced it had acquired American technology blog 'Boy Genius Report' via a press release posted on Boy Genius's website.[9] The Boy Genius Report announced its intentions to relocate its website to newly acquired "www.bgr.com", which was launched in May 2010. In November 2010, the company launched TVLine.com, a consumer TV focused website, operated by co-founder and Editor in Chief Michael Ausiello, formerly of Entertainment Weekly, Oncars.com, and purchased 40% of India.com, one of the largest internet providers in Asia and which carries MMC content.

Mail.com was sold to the German company United Internet in 2010, however MMC continues to be an exclusive content provider to United Internet and the Mail.com portal, as well as to India.com, and launched a German-language version of BGR.com in March 2011.

In October 2012, PMC bought Variety from Reed Elsevier for an estimated $25 million.[12] On October 10, 2012, Jay Penske announced the paywall for Variety would come down, the print version would remain, and that he would invest more in the digital platform of Variety.com. Since then, PMC has continued to take steps to expand Variety, including a change from publishing five days a week to instead producing a weekly print publication, growth of its data and event businesses and launching new international editions.[13]

As of 2018, PMC continues to be the owner of Deadline Hollywood, which since the 2007-08 WGA Strike has been considered Variety's largest competitor in online showbiz news.

In June 2015, Penske Media Corporation formed a partnership with Shutterstock Inc. to create and license entertainment and fashion images to the world's top media, publishing, and creative companies. Commencing in 2016, Shutterstock will have an exclusive right and license to PMC's archive.[15]

On January 18, 2016, PMC acquired independent film and television platform, Indiewire. "Bringing Indiewire into the Penske organization is an exciting opportunity to further ignite a pioneering brand while advancing its coverage of the TV industry, digital, and emerging OTT platforms." Jay Penske, PMC CEO said.[16]

In January 2017, Penske Media Corporation entered into a joint venture for the Robb Report with Rockbridge, the private equity firm of Dan Gilbert.[17] In December 2017, Penske Media announced to buy a majority stake of Rolling Stone magazine from Wenner Media.[18]

The Gold Derby Awards (or "Gold Derby TV and Film Awards") are awards given by the website Goldderby.com for television and film.[19] The awards began in 2004.[20] Owned by Jay Penske since 2015, it is a brand of the Penske Media Corporation.[21]